Grey, Black and Blue: Nursing Home Violence
From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

When elders and their families worry about the risk of patient abuse in long-term care facilities, they are usually thinking about abuse or neglect by staff. However, recent studies reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine and Journal of the American Geriatrics Society suggest that elders living in nursing homes may have more to fear from their fellow residents. One study suggested that as many as 88,000 (or about 6.8 percent) of U.S. nursing home residents are physically aggressive each week — hitting, scratching, or in some cases sexually abusing others.

The situation is similar in Canada, where a series of reports have recommended changes in staff training and institutional protocols; for the most part these recommendations have been ignored. In this very disturbing documentary, CBC journalist take their sometimes concealed cameras into a variety of long-term care facilities to reveal the reality of what is happening and what is being done — or more often not done — about it.

26 minutes
© 2007
Purchase $219 DVD
Order No. QA-498
ISBN (DVD) 1-57295-498-1

Awards & Conference Screenings
WorldFest Houston Film Festival, Special Jury Award

Related Films
Elder Abuse: Illuminates both the fear and ambivalence experienced by elderly people who are being abused by family members, and their struggles to find help.

A Safer Place: Profiles two elderly adults who were helped by social services agencies to recognize the abusive situations they were living in and seek assistance. A formerly abusive daughter is also interviewed.

I'd Rather Be Home: Follows the case of an elderly man who has been repeatedly abused by his son, over a period of seven years. (A continuation of a case from the film, Elder Abuse: Five Case Studies.)

When Help Was There: This powerful video examines the crisis of elder abuse through four ethnically diverse cases of physical, emotional, and financial abuse.

Just to Have a Peaceful Life: This extract of a case originally profiled in Elder Abuse: Five Case Studies is a frightening demonstration of the patterns of dependency and denial that fuel the cycle of elder abuse.

To rent or purchase this film, please visit the Icarus Films website

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